“Research In Motion (RIM) (TSX: RIM; NASDAQ: RIMM), RBC (RY: TSX; RY: NYSE) and Thomson Reuters (NYSE: TRI; TSX: TRI; LSE: TRIL; NASDAQ: TRIN), today announced plans to launch the BlackBerry® Partners Fund, a US$150 million venture capital fund, to invest in mobile applications and services for the BlackBerry® platform and other mobile platforms. The Fund is to be co-managed by JLA Ventures and RBC Venture Partners.”
The compeition in the mobile marketplace just continues to heat up, and so are efforts to entice developers to build applications on their platforms. With all of the money on the table and so little infrastructure in place today, there are some terrific opportunties for new and existing startups to get a solid footing the the Wild West of Mobile application development. If you need more incentive, check out what the platform creators are offering:
Google is offering $10 million in awards to developers who come up with applications for the Android platform - “no strings attached”.
RIM just announced a partnership that will invest $150 million in companies who are building applications for mobile platforms (you can bet that they will require efforts toward the Blackberry too).
Kleiner Perkins recently announced a $100 millon fund that will invest in iPhone related startups.
